It’s the absolute worst when you see something you didn’t mean to see that you know you won’t be able to get out of your head for a while… or maybe forever.
The following Ask Redditors responded to the question, “What is the most disturbing or creepy thing you’ve witnessed in real life?”
As a disclaimer, you should know a few stories in this article may include disturbing content. Reader discretion is advised.
I was riding the subway and saw a guy dressed as a clown talking to a 20-something-year-old hipster girl across the aisle from him. This wasn’t a fun circus-type clown outfit…think sleazy greasepaint over day old stubble, stained clothing type clown.The the makeup, full get up with polka dot pants, big shoes and everything. Seemed to be his profession.
notmytemp0
My dad died of cirrhosis of the liver. It’s not a pretty way to go. The worst part about it is that when the liver stops working the way it should, it causes a build up of ammonia in the blood that can severely affect the brain.
My dad was a former marine and was always a very level headed guy, so when his mind started to go, it was terrifying. I can remember one day, him and I were alone and he suddenly started talking in gibberish. He stood up, walked to the middle of the room and started peeing in his pants. I asked him what he was doing and he said “What are you doing in the bathroom? I’m trying to go pee, get out!” We were in the living room. A minute later, he collapsed on the floor and I had to call 911.
It might not sound creepy to some, but seeing your parent like that is awful.
Cherry_Koolaid
I was walking with a friend on the sidewalk of a crowded street in the city I was living in a few weeks ago. There was a loud, terrible noise that made us both spin around and I witnessed someone being launched into the air after being hit by a car and their body being mangled on the ground from the impact. I rushed over and the person was obviously dead (eyes wide open, blood tricking out of mouth).
I’m not deeply scarred by it since I’ve come to accept things like this happen every day, but I do think about it often. The only person who knows about it besides me is the person I was with and my closest friends. I would rather keep that experience in the past.
RyansVibes
I’m a paramedic and have been for about 10 years now. I’ve seen a lot of disturbing things but there is one thing sticks out to me more than the rest.
When I was still new I went on a call for “flu-like symptoms” and the elderly lady literally had just fever body aches and a cough with no other complaints. So, we were all thinking she might actually have the flu. She wanted to go to the hospital so we got her on the cot and the design of her ground floor apartment and all her furniture made it impossible to turn the cot around so we had to wheel her out backwards with me at her feet and staring at her face.
We just get out the door when she lets out this horrible gurgle scream, turns grey and slumps over. My partner and another firefighter were next to her head and confirmed she had no pulse. We were close to the truck so we loaded her up while I started CPR. As I start pumping her chest she goes from this blank stare of the dead to looking right at me with this confused look on her face and started moving her arms trying to get me to stop—so I do.
Instantly she was back to dead again, complete with a blank stare and no movement. This time the three of us all confirmed no pulse, so I continue CPR and she starts looking up at me again with that same confused look while moving her arms around. Now I’m thinking this is got to be a mistake she can’t be dead and moving while I do CPR, can she?
I stopped, checked, and she was still dead with no pulse. I resumed CPR and yes again she was looking up right at my eyes moving again just as weirded out as I was. I just started talking to her to try to let her know why I was doing CPR on her as my partner got the cardiac monitor defibrillator pads stuck on her. When I stopped for the rhythm check she was in ventricular fibrillation. A single shock and we got a slow pulse back. Started the cardiac monitor’s pacing function and while she never regained consciousness we got her to the hospital alive.
I Found out later she died at the hospital but I’ll never forget that look on her face while we made eye contact while I did CPR on her. I had no idea that could happen but the doctor in the ER told me that if CPR is started quickly enough and the compressions are deep enough you actually can remain somewhat conscious during it even if your heart is otherwise not beating.
This has happened to me a handful of times since then so I always talk to my dead patients now while we are doing CPR, just in case.
giggityfacepalmer
The most disturbing was probably picking out what I wanted to be buried in when I was 21. I was about to have surgery and the neurologist told my parents there was a good chance I wouldn’t make it.
I still think about it sometimes and I’m 44 now.
FormedFecalIncident
I was outside work one day having a smoke when I heard something that sounded like a car crash so I walked around the corner to check it out. Turns out a woman had hit an elderly man on a motor scooter who was crossing at a crosswalk with his elderly wife, also on a scooter. She sent him flying about 20 feet and his head was split open like a watermelon – blood everywhere, he was obviously dead.
The woman then gets out of her car, sees what she’s done and immediately vomits everywhere and collapses. Horrible screaming that I won’t forget from the man’s wife while she just sits in the middle of the street on her scooter. That was some messed up stuff.
Pay attention when you’re driving kids. You are responsible for about 4000 pounds of steel when you’re behind that wheel.
canadianbacon-eh-tor
A little boy went missing at a beach pond we were at when I was a kid. I was about ten, he was younger than me by a couple years, I’m thinking he was about seven. We had seen his mom go from nervous anxiety to all out hysterics walking around on the sand – then they announced a beach wide search. All of the adults linked arms and walked out into the water searching. Everyone held their breath waiting.
My dad came walking forward with this little boy laying in his arms, mouth so blue. He had found him literally submerged under the murky water in deep mud out away from the shore. His mother was screaming and pounding on his father’s chest – the little boy had tried to swim to catch up to a little boat and had gone off in and he drowned.
I remember thinking he was alive, despite the blue lips. I think he did spit up mud when they laid him out for CPR but I doubt he was alive. Watching my dad walk out with him in his arms is something I’ll never forget.
We went to the funeral, the mother was inconsolable – you could tell that her and the husband were never going to get through this together. She clearly blamed him for the loss of their child.
Cityofooo
I was on a trail ride with a woman and her horse. Her horse was really, REEEALLY old but was her best friend. All was good until we got to the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden her horse has a heart attack. When a horse has a heart attack they rear straight up. The horse feel over right on top of her.
We were in Western Saddles, the saddle horn went right through her sternum and killed her. We rolled the dead horse off of her and all we could hear was the rush of air leaving her (or entering I have no idea she just made a strange gurgling noise that sounded like an old coffee maker).
Vexxlyn
I was in a restroom in the back of a food court in the bottom of a large tower-a 60+ story tower in Houston. It was a pretty small bathroom, and kinda out of the way, which is why I was there to do my business. Well, I’m just starting to wrap things up, and in walks a young man who proceeded to the urinal and does his thing.
I only catch a quick glimpse of him through the crack in the stall, he seems to be in his mid to late 20s. When he is washing his hands, his phone rings and he starts talking, oblivious to my presence. I can hear a tinny female voice on the other end. I tuck my feet up and listen.
At first he doesn’t know who this girl is, but he quickly figures out that she’s a girl he hooked up with on a recent business trip. He’s going to be back there soon, maybe they can hangout? He asks. Maybe, she says, but she has news.
She’s pregnant and she wants to get an abortion. She wants him to pay for it, he agrees. He asks her if there is anything else he can do – should he go with her to get it done? No, she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t really want to see him again. He was calm, supportive of her decision. They ended the conversation almost gently, as if afraid of hurting each other further.
After he hung up it was dead silent for about 15 seconds, and then he broke down. I stayed very very still. I did not want to see this intimately into his life, I had only wanted to preserve a sense of privacy, but at this point I was committed.
He cursed and cried for about 5 minutes, then gave himself a little pep-talk in the mirror. This was, I learned, not the first time he had been in this situation. I waited a couple minutes before I left the bathroom. As I was walking back through the food court I saw him sitting at a table with various professional looking business people, all smiling and convivial, all evidence of the storm he just weathered gone from his face.
shooth
I lived in the downtown area of my city for 3 years with my husband. One night after our favorite bar closed down we decided to walk down the street and get a couple slices of pizza instead.
On the way there we see a girl who is so messed up she literally cannot walk. She was literally falling down drunk trying to walk down the street with her head rolling from side to side as she is walking. Just picture a 110 pound rag doll trying to stand. Then we realize that she is digging in her bag like she’s looking for keys.
So I stop her and ask if she is okay, and she just keeps going “I have to get away. I have to get away.” That’s when we notice the trail of blood on the sidewalk behind her. Her neck is bright red like she had been choked, and her lip is swollen. We call 911. She finally takes a deep breath and says she thinks she was drugged, but know she was raped.
Before we can even get her calmed down enough to tell us her name, a guy with a big scratch on his face and blood on his shirt comes walking up and starts saying she is his wife, and he needs to get her home. My husband stepped in and says no I think we will find out where she needs to go from her. The guy tries to swing at my husband, who knocks him and pins him down.
Then the woman starts seizing.
So we were on the sidewalk, my husband has ‘the rapist’ pinned to the ground, I’ve got this woman’s head in my lap hoping she doesn’t die while we wait for the ambulance to get there. What I always found the most disturbing wasn’t the evil that drove that man to rape that woman, it was that 10 people gathered around us in the course of the exchange, not one offered to help. But one did take a video.
c*ntmuffin93
I used to be an Emergency Medical Technician and while I was working we got a call for a multiple car collision. We get on the scene and there are a few injuries among the car drivers but nothing too serious.
Going through each person, I noticed a man kneeling on the ground facing away from me. I ran up and asked if he was hurt and noticed he was holding his son. Apparently one of the cars hit and killed the kid while the dad and son were walking. I put my hand on his shoulder.
The dad was so grief stricken he was not breathing and when he finally took a breath, he screamed like something I’ve never heard before. That still haunts me. No one should have to see their child die.
MasterPotatochip
I saw an old lady walking down the street screaming stuff like,”Mom, I want my mom, where’s my mom? I can’t do it anymore I can’t”.
She was in tears and seemed so disturbed and not well mentally.
SuperNiceUsername
I’m sitting on the couch alone at night watching TV, lights are off, and I’ve got my cat in my lap. Suddenly something startles my cat and he sits bolt-upright, facing me, looking directly over my shoulder. His eyes go like saucers and he starts low-growling (never heard him growl before). He was frozen, staring, didn’t move.
I’ve got nothing behind me (that I know of) but a brick wall with maybe a half meter gap between the couch and that wall. So I’m frozen in place watching my cat who is frozen in place watching something behind me, and he is watching it intently.
At this point there’s no doubt in my mind from his reaction that there’s someone behind me (he’s only scared of one thing – strangers). Now if it was a bug or a moth his gaze would be darting and he’d have some playfulness about him. Nope. Not in this instance. He was locked onto something that truly scared him. He was a statue. Fight or flight mode.
Eventually I get the balls up to slowly turn around. Nothing. I look behind the couch in the gap. Nothing.
My cat settles and goes back to sleep.
Either a frigging ghost was in the room with me that night or my cat is a jerk. He scared the life out of me though with sheer, creeping fear as I genuinely thought someone had snuck up behind me.
Art3sian
I was at a movie alone, and I came out to get get some soda and there was a guy waiting outside the theatre just looking…off. I came out 45 minutes later to pee and the guy was in the movie theatre just standing around in the lobby. There was something totally out of place about him. He was dressed normal for the area, but he was looking around nervously and trying to avoid any sort of eye contact. So I look at the movie times and there are like 3 kids movies getting out in a half hour.
I ask him,”Are you waiting for your kids to get out of a movie?” And he ran out the door. It was a theatre in a mostly empty strip-mall and it was like 40 degrees fahrenheit out so he probably wasn’t out for a stroll.
I don’t know if he was just an odd ball or if he had actual nefarious intentions, but it stuck with me.
Tumble85
This happened when I was around 22-years-old. I was driving over a mountain pass, going around a corner, when I saw a mob of crows on the body of a deer that had been hit by a truck. As my vehicle approached, some of the birds flew off the body…and the deer attempted to stand up. These crows were eating the deer ALIVE, after he had been injured by the impact of the semi-truck.
robertbpratt